The people who called themselves
Saba' (biblical Sheba) are both the earliest and the most abundantly attested in
the surviving written records. Their centre was at Ma'rib, east of present-day
San'ā', Yemen and on the edge of the sand desert. (In the indigenous
inscriptions Ma'rib is rendered Mryb or Mrb; the modern spelling is based on an
unjustified “correction” by medieval Arabic writers.)